


something i can't understand

by quixotix



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mild Horror, Pre-Slash, Read the A/N please I don't wanna clog it with tags, RoyEd Month 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24098884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixotix/pseuds/quixotix
Summary: It was neither clear nor particularly bright on the morning Edward Elric found himself standing on the porch of what had once been the Mustang family household, a flashlight clutched in one hand. The gate had been easy enough to get by, so overgrown with weeds that the hinges were too weak to properly hold it. The next barrier would be getting into the house itself.Or rather, working up the balls to try getting into the house.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44
Collections: RoyEd month





	something i can't understand

**Author's Note:**

> RoyEd Month 2020, Day 9- Steampunk.
> 
> Lads, I cannot tell you what the fuck is going on with this one. I honestly don't know myself. I got the idea and wrote it mostly in one sitting in a hyperfocused state, but, at the end of the day, must my fics be good? Is it not enough for me to turn Roy Mustang into a sentient wind up toy?
> 
> Roy's around 29, and Ed's 24 if anyone's concerned about that.
> 
> now, some CONTENT WARNINGS: this fic hinges quite a bit on the concept of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and touches some kind of dark topics. There is brief talk of grave robbing/desecration (yes, I know, please bear with me), and some mild body horror by way of implying human organs are being put in metal bodies. I wouldn't consider myself a good scary story writer by any means, but if that's not your cup of tea, feel free to dip on this one! <3
> 
> That's all from me for now. Enjoy!
> 
> (title is from Impossible from The Clockmaker's Daughter soundtrack)

Just at the edge of the woods that surrounded Resembool, there was a large, empty house. It had once belonged to the Mustangs, a couple who had moved in from the city years ago, when their new baby son was born.

They had been kind people. Henry Mustang had been a doctor, happy to provide help to anyone who couldn’t afford to travel to the city for treatment. His wife had been a quiet, rather shy woman, but spent much of her time wandering around the weekend markets. She’d always had a smile for anyone who passed her. Of the entire family, the son was the one everyone knew very little about. He mostly kept to himself, usually tucked away in the far corner of the public library, nose stuck in a book. He grew into a handsome young man, in the years they lived there, dark eyed and broad shouldered.

Everyone in town knew the Mustangs, and had nothing but pleasant things to say about them. They were a warm, happy, close-knit little group, who seemed to live the idyllic country life.

But that all came to a sudden, tragic end when the wife and son passed away, not long after the son’s 26th birthday. There had been almost no warning, no sign that could have ensured it was prevented. They passed in their sleep, some sort of hereditary health issue, and were buried in a small plot of land not far from the house. From there, a series of very unfortunate events unfolded.

Henry handled his grief badly, refusing to speak to anyone, whether they were there for treatment or simply to offer him condolences. He became hostile, reclusive, locking himself away in his home, working late into the night in his small clinic under the house. He wasn’t seen again, until three years later, when a few concerned neighbours had found a way into the home to check on him, only to find his body face down at his operating table.

The plan had been to bury him in the same small plot as his wife and son. But when the small procession had carried his coffin to it, they’d been horrified to find the graves had been dug up and the bodies inside gone. The doctor eventually was laid to rest in the local cemetery. Try as the neighbours might have to keep it quiet, news of what had happened to his family’s remains soon spread. And with them, so too did rather unpleasant rumours. 

It didn’t take long for the older boys in town to start making accusations of the late Henry Mustang, his unhealthy reaction to his loss and the state his wife and son’s graves were found in. Word was that he had dug them out in the desperate hope that he could bring them back, by building new bodies for them out of scrap-metal. They claimed he’d been inspired by the automail he’d seen some of the townspeople using, and that he’d become so fixated on the task that he eventually starved himself to death trying to make it work. What was left of his wife and son had been found and hastily re-buried by the same people that found the doctor, to protect the family’s reputation. Rumour had it that if you peeked through the cellar windows on a clear, bright day, you could see the rusting remains of his failed attempts, and there had even been whispers that sometimes, if you looked hard enough, you could see one moving around in the gap between the heavy, old curtains.

* * *

It was neither clear nor particularly bright on the morning Edward Elric found himself standing on the porch of what had once been the Mustang family household, a flashlight clutched in one hand. The gate had been easy enough to get by, so overgrown with weeds that the hinges were too weak to properly hold it. The next barrier would be getting into the house itself.

Or rather, working up the balls to _try_ getting into the house. 

Winry had fixated for years on the stories of the piles of old metal body parts lying around in the basement of the house and had been desperate to get her hands on some of it to test it. And Edward had never been one to shy away from the chance to stick his nose where he was told not to. Planning it all last night, it had seemed like a great idea. Now, standing on the dilapidated porch and peering in dark windows, this seemed more like one of those “impulse control issues” his mother had always berated him for. Ed had never really known the Mustangs, til the father had been buried, and the house had always had an uneasy air to it since, even before the stories of grave robbing had made it to town. The murmuring about ghosts and metal zombies certainly didn’t help. 

But he’d already made it this far, and ridiculous as it was, his own pride wasn’t going to let him walk away. So, into the fire it was. 

The door was, predictably, locked. Edward slowly made his way around the side of the building, dodging brambles and rough branches, until finally, he came across a window just barely holding onto its frame. A quick transmutation pulled it off quickly and quietly, and he dropped into the house as gently as possible. 

The room he’d climbed into was wide and dim, and looked like a living room. He stood slowly, the floor groaning under him, making his way across to the mantlepiece to look at the series of framed photos lined up along it. 

Sat in the centre was a photo of the family of the house. It must have been years old, seemingly from when they’d first moved in. Henry Mustang sat next to his wife on the porch steps, an arm wrapped around her back, both of them smiling widely. In his wife’s lap sat a round, befuddled looking baby, reaching a small hand out to the camera. _Roy_ , Ed remembered, _that was the son’s name._ Most of the photographs were of Roy, he realised, the small baby from the first picture growing into a sweet-faced child, then a grinning teenager, before finally ending with a photo of him standing next to his father, now a young man. He was dark haired and pale skinned, the image of his mother. Rather good-looking, Ed had to admit.

If he’d been paying more attention, it would have struck him then as odd just how well-dusted the mantle was. 

The floorboards creaked eerily as Edward made his way into the hallway, peering across it past the big staircase, through the arching entrance to the dining room. The table was bare, save for a lonely candelabra in the middle. Strange that it wasn’t covered up. In all the pictures Ed had seen of abandoned houses, the furniture usually had dust sheets thrown over it. 

The hallway led down into the back of the building, much darker than the rest of the house. Ed flicked his flashlight on, the light glinting off a door handle to the left of the staircase. It took a bit of force to get the heavy thing open, but he managed, shining the light down into what must have been the cellar. The stairs were steep and uneven and as he slowly made his way down them, Edward couldn’t shake a feeling almost like he was being watched from the darkness below. 

The cellar had a clinical smell to it, an array of shelves all packed in tight against each other. They were stacked high with bottles and jars, some knocked on their sides, labels fading and covered in a thick layer of dust. Those closest to the staircase seemed to be the oldest, filled with anesthetic and basic medicines. Ed recognises a few of the labels from the automail clinic. 

But the further he moved into the room, the more uneasy Ed became, as the tubs of pills and canisters of sedative gradually gave way for clear jars of sickly looking fluids with odd shapes floating in them. His stomach twists with the sinking suspicion that some of the rumours about the grieving doctor may have been based in more truth than any of the kids who spread them could have imagined. 

The shelving eventually gives way to an open space that looked like it was once used for surgery. There are enormous lights attached to the ceiling, cobwebs hanging despondently from them. When Edward stepped closer, the flashlight fell onto the legs of an operating table, and when he swung the light upwards, it bounced back off something lying on the surface of it. When his eyes finally adjust to the light, he barely manages to swallow a cry of fright.

At first glance, it appeared for all the world to be a human body. It lay with its arms and legs splayed over the sides of the operating table, as though it had been dropped there carelessly and forgotten about, surrounded by dark stains. The light of the torch wavered around with the trembling of Edward’s hand, glinting off the form in a way that made it obvious he wasn’t looking at a person. It was metal. 

Edward turned sideways, casting the light around the space. Sure enough, stacked against the walls were more metal parts, hands and torsos and even heads all shining in the dark. Ed wasn’t sure if the sensation building from his stomach was a hysterical laugh or just bile. Some of them were covered in the same stains from the table splashed across their faces. He looks once more to the one lying on the table.

It was more intact than its counterparts, with a line around the top of the head where it had been removed and reattached. Ed’s eyes trailed over the long, faux dark hair stuck to it. He took a deep breath in, holding it until he felt less likely to be sick, the photograph of Mrs Mustang from the mantlepiece clear in his mind. It was all too easy to put the pieces together. 

He stumbled backwards, knocking into the shelves as he went, making the jars rattle far too loudly in the dead quiet of the room. He dashed for the stairs, all thoughts of metal scavenging long forgotten, trying to put the image of the thing on the table getting up and shambling after him out of his mind. 

After what seemed like an eternity of tripping up the steep blocks of steps, he finally reached the cellar door, gripping the handle with a sweating palm and twisting-

Footsteps. In the hallway outside. Ed’s heart jumped into his throat. He pressed his forehead to the door, cracking it open as slowly as possible to stop the hinges making any noise. Peeking through the crack, he caught sight of a dark form crossing from the living room into the dining room. Their steps landed heavily on the floor, and Edward could hear them echoing as the shape moved from the dining room further into the house. 

He waited for several long seconds, until the sound faded out completely, then hesitantly stepped into the hall, lightheaded and trying to decide if it was worth making a run for the window he’d gotten in through. If he was too slow, whoever… _what_ ever it was might come back, but running made it more likely for him to be heard. And he had no guarantee of how far from him the thing actually was. 

He rushed forward a few paces, before he had to grab the banisters of the stairs to keep himself standing. His legs were shaking, breath coming in frantic pants. He had to make a decision, fast. 

As though on cue, the footsteps started coming back towards the hall. And Edward made the most stupid decision possible- he ran up the stairs. His automail thumped heavily on them, too loud for the thing downstairs to miss. When he reached the landing, he started running blindly, rattling the handles of locked door after locked door. Behind him, he could hear the figure making its way up to him. 

The end of the hall split off in two directions either side of him, and because he was apparently a complete fucking idiot, Edward dashed down the darker one, only to be almost immediately met with a dead end. He allowed himself a howl of dismay, turning to race back the way he came. 

As he passed back by the hall leading to the stairs, he saw the figure once more, standing near the split of the hallways, far closer and bigger than Ed had anticipated. From this distance, he could hear the ticking noise it made, like a clock. 

So distracted was he by the awful, looming shape, that Ed didn’t notice the uneven carpet before him. He tripped over it, going headfirst into a nearby table with a crash, leaving him too disoriented to do much more than lie there and groan, blood pounding in his ears as the sound of _tick-tick-tick_ and clanking footsteps gets closer and closer, eventually stopping just before him. The figure leaned over him, and the last thing Edward saw before passing out was two eyes, flickering like dying light bulbs in the dim hallway. 

* * *

When he comes to, Edward finds himself laid on a sofa in what looks like a study. It’s brighter than it was earlier, the afternoon sun pouring through the small gap in surprisingly clean curtains. He sits up slowly, the room swaying as he does, then notices a glass of water set on the table before him. Against his better judgment, he picks it up and takes a gulp from it. It’s still cool, so it’s likely that whoever left it hadn’t been gone long.

Sure enough, Ed hears that eerie sound of clockwork in motion, the light clank of metal just behind it. Then the door creaks open, and standing in front of him is what must be the only successful version of those scrap heaps in the cellar. 

Edward has to give Doctor Mustang his credit- the thing in front of him does look like the person that had been Roy Mustang. It’s wearing what must have once been Roy’s clothes, frame covered in fake skin just slightly paler than what he had seen in the pictures downstairs. it’s got the same thick, faux hair as the one that had been on the table, hanging messily into glowing, dark eyes. Through the gaps in its bangs, he can see the line where the top of the head had been re-affixed. All in all, Ed admits to himself with a flush, it really is rather pretty, for a piece of seemingly sentient metal. Even when completely still, it _tick-tick-tick_ s. 

Ed swallows once, heavily, leaning forward to set the glass back on the table. He keeps his movements slow, an illogical part of him wondering if maybe the thing won’t notice him if he just stays still enough. 

There are several beats of awkward silence, filled only by the unnatural noise of the thing’s clockwork insides, and eventually Edward gives in to his own morbid curiosity, self-preservation be damned.

“You...do you live here?” 

The thing (creature? Machine? Was calling it an object insensitive?) nods once, body unnaturally still as it’s head bobs. Ed tries to push past how much the uncanny look of it unsettles him. 

“What....” he starts, still not sure if the manners he was raised with apply in this situation. He lets out a puff of frustrated air, and continues. “What are you?”

It _smiles_ , ruefully, like it knows something Edward doesn’t.

“I’m Roy,” it answers, voice crackling. Whatever piece of machinery is creating the noise, it sounds damaged. 

“...Roy. As in Roy Mustang? The one who _died_ a few years ago?”

Another uncanny-valley nod. 

“But,” the blond stammers. “How are you… your father…”

With the mention of the doctor, it’s- _Roy’s_ face goes stiff once more. This obviously isn’t a line of questioning Edward’s likely to get any answers from. That same awkward silence hangs over them again.

A grandfather clock chimes suddenly, sharply, somewhere in the hallway outside. It rings out five times, and Edward jumps to his feet. He eyes Roy wearily where it (he? They?) stands in the doorway. Roy, seemingly catching on, steps aside, leaving a wide space for Ed to comfortably step by into the hall. 

“The front door is open,” says that crackling voice, and Ed nods his thanks, making his way back out and down the staircase. The sound of those metallic steps following after him, almost leisurely, is somehow less intimidating than it had been earlier. 

Sure enough, the front door swings open easily when Ed turns the handle. He takes one last look at Roy, stood at the top of the staircase, hands folded. Despite himself, Ed waves as he steps out the door. Roy's mouth twitches as though he’s fighting another smile, and the last thing Edward sees before he shuts the door is one pale, clicking arm raising to return the gesture. 

When he gets home, he’ll tell Winry the house was empty. None of the old piles of metal would have been of any use to her anyway, and the last thing he wants is to give her any incentive to go nosing around the house herself. 

As he lies in bed later that evening, he finds his mind stuck on the impressive piece of machinery calling itself Roy Mustang, wondering just how long they’d been in that house alone. Wondering if perhaps they wouldn’t mind another visit.

Slowly, Edward drifts off to the memory of pretty dark eyes flickering like lights, and the sound of his bedside clock _tick-tick-tick_ ing.

**Author's Note:**

> Ed's gonna fuck the tin man.
> 
> Posting this just after midnight on the 9th, I'm cheating a little bit, ssshhh. If you catch any glaring grammar or formatting problems, please do let me know! Thank you for making it this far.


End file.
